Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “α”

LIEFMANN,CARTELS AND TRUSTS

Professor Dr. R. Liefmann,Cartels and Trusts and the Further Development of Economic Organisation, 2nd edition, Stuttgart, 1910. Library of Jurisprudence and Political Science.

The facts are not badly selected but, of course, apologetically.

N.B.:p. 161:

The number of industrial cartels in Germany (1905) was3 8 5(in reality more: p. 25).[2]

N.B.  ||||Riesser(p. 137), in quoting these statistics, adds: “about 12,000firms participated ‘directly’ in these cartels”.Riesser,The German Big Banks and Their Concentration, 3rd edition, Jena, 1910.

The number of international cartels (with German participation) isabout 100(p. 30: in 1897 it was about 40).[3]

The Steel Trustin America (1908: 165,211 workers) 1907—210,180 workers (total wages—$161 million), net profit—$170 million, capital—$1,100 million (p. 124).

In 1908, the biggest firm in the German mining industry, Gelsenkirchner Bergwerksgesellschaft, had 1,705 employees + 44,343 workers (wages—70.5 million marks).

(p. 135). In 1902 (June 17, 1902)Schwabfounded theShipbuilding Company, capital $70.9 million—of which Schwab had $20 million. Later this companywent bankrupt; the public were robbed!

(173, etc.) “Interlocking”, “holdings” (passim), “abolishing isolation” (p. 155)—these are Liefmann’s “catch-words” for avoiding (and obscuring) Marx’s concept of “socialisation”.[4]

((End of extracts from Liefmann))

[1]Ibid., p. 252.—Ed.

[2]Ibid., p. 202.—Ed.

[3]See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 62.—Ed.

[4]Marx’s concept of “socialisation”, based on a scientific analysis of the objective laws of development of capitalist society, points to the necessity and inevitability of the means of production passing from private capitalist ownership to social ownership. Lenin showed that the conflict between the production relations and the productive forces under capitalism becomes very acute in the era of imperialism. In this last stage of capitalism the concentration and socialisation of production reach the highest level (see present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 205, 207, 302-03). This makes it easier, after the victory of the socialist revolution, for the workers’ and peasants’ state to take over the basic means of production and organise planned production in the interests of the people. p. 56